


Hospital of Broken Hearts

by JuniorWoofles



Series: Disney Dump Box [6]
Category: Disney - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 12:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7618312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuniorWoofles/pseuds/JuniorWoofles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here they all were; the damaged and broken. Here they all were; trying to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ariel

There I was, sitting in my bed staring up into space. They claim that this isn’t a place for mental people and that this place isn’t a hospital; but it is. I‘ve been here for long enough now to know. I knew perfectly well why I was here too. Sometimes it seemed fair and other times it seemed like Father was deliberately punishing me for what he did. Anger rises from within me so I stand up to walk around.

All the rooms are quite small but we’re allowed to decorate them in whatever way we wish and the nurses have no say at all. I heard someone had put nude pictures up and refused to take them down and so they’re still there. Last I heard at least. That person, whoever they were, might have passed the tests.

I walk past my collection of forks and shells and the small fish bones I scavenged and walk around again. I walk past my huge vanity covered in hairbrushes and makeups and dyes. I walk past the small metal bed covered in the same blue sheets. I liked the peaceful colour of them and just never had it changed. I walk past a small boat in a bottle, pride of place in my room and stare into it. I can almost feel the wind moving and the sea breeze. I can see the move of the rudder and the captain on its deck.

The captain was standing there, tall and proud and his dark hair was blowing in the wind. He looked exactly as a prince should look; handsome, regal and **_human_**! I wobble on my legs slightly and run to my bed and cry into my pillow like I normally do every night. It’s just too hard!  


* * *

                                      

My favourite nurse finds me much later and takes me away to get some food.  She calms me down and soothes me and promises that no one can hurt me in the canteen. In the canteen they’ll be no trinkets that hurt, no memories can be triggered that’ll make you cry there. Hesitantly I give in and using my walking device I slowly move around my room. I’m half tempted to look back at the bottle but a look from my nurse tells me that we need to move and that I shouldn’t be working himself up before I go to a public zone.

In all fairness it’s not that public. It’s just that all the inmates, (ok so it’s not a prison but there’s no escape), I mean, patients can eat together. It’s the only time I’ve interacted with them since I arrived about a month or so ago. I remember that night; hurt, betrayal, anger. That deep horrible anger when Father found out what I’d done. The sense of feeling so completely lost, so utterly alone in this universe with no one to turn to and no one who would love me. I remember stumbling to this place like a magnet. I thought it was perfect, a safe place where I could cry out all my problems until I was dry and ready to make up. Turns out things aren’t as simple as that.

I sit down at one of the plastic seats next to a small table, square so that we don’t have to look at others, and wait for my nurse to bring my plastic tray of food over. There are three other patients with their nurses sitting at this table.  I could probably name them all from the board at the front. Well, that little girl is Lilo, I think she almost lost her sister and her only friend after a house fire went wrong. She refused foster care and was brought here instead. Poor kid; She’s only 8 or something now.

There’s a boy here too; another orphan. Well Lilo’s not quite an orphan but you get the picture. He’d been in an orphanage his whole life and he’s just a bit weird. I walked past his room once and it was open. I peeked in as I walked and it was covered with sciencey stuff or whatever it’s called and you always hear the strangest of noises coming from his room. I think his name’s Lewis or something. His hair is so bright that he wears a baseball cap every day. You can just about see the tips of his hair underneath but nothing else.

There’s another girl at the table too. I can’t remember her name but she’s Chinese origin and only seems able to speak in fluent Chinese all the time. I think they are trying to teach her English but I think she’s only agreeing because she knows she can never go home again. Apparently her parents cut her off because she chopped her hair off and ran away to war. Apparently she’s lucky to be alive. I feel some sort of empathy towards her. I wonder if her father had yelled at her too, causing your whole kingdom to rattle in fear and quake as though a sea monster had been awakened. Did he throw up your most treasured possessions and scream at your friends too I wonder? I look at her sad, empty face and decided that maybe I might ask my nurse about her.

Then there’s that Jim kid. He looks sullen and his nurse is staring at him very carefully, as though they expect him to run away at any second. I half wish he would. It would be nice to have some entertainment around here for once. Stop us thinking about our own problems for once and give us a laugh. But the staff here would never allow it. I can’t remember why he’s here, I just know that he’s kind cute but in a scruffy way and he intrigues me. I want to get to know him better but the nurses are fairly strict about interaction. I think they’re most afraid about suicides, escape attempts and basic bad mouthing towards the hospital.

But how could anyone bad mouth a place that had been taking such good care of everyone? I mean the medicine was fair; the actually seemed to care and the food wasn’t terrible either. I mean everyone seemed to be eating it from what I could see without turning in my seat and arousing suspicion.

I look down at my plate and have no idea what it is. I decide it must be safe enough to eat if everyone one else was eating it. I eat a little bit of the creamy stuff and it does taste creamy indeed. I try the orangey looking _vegetable?_ It tastes nice too so I eat that. I use my _fork_ and mash it into the creamy stuff - That just makes it taste nicer. I try the brown stuff, poking it with the utensil in my hand first. It doesn’t like nice at all. It’s slightly watered down sauce and the actual _meat_ is all spindly like _worms_? I’m not very good at this language yet. I take a nervous bite and find that it tastes alright and begin to eat up. Soon the whole plate is clean and I am content. I dab at my mouth with a napkin like I saw people at the human palace doing.

“Nurse, What was that?” I ask with a small smile and a question in my eyes. I know this from constantly asking questions about my life to a mirror. Fat lot of use that does; they never reply to me.

“Dear, that’s mince, neeps and tatties.” She says in her crisp Scottish accent.

“What’s a neep? And how can I be a tattie if I just ate one?” I ask confused, _again._

“Dear, a tatty is a silly person but that tattie that was on your plate was actually a potato. And neeps are turnips. I’m sorry that you didn’t understand my dialect.”

I smile and nod my head understanding. Neeps and tatties are foods which are different when not in Nurses’ language and a tatty was something I could be at times. I hear a chortle from the other end of the table and turn my head sharply to see who finds my ability to ask questions amusing.  It was that Jim boy! I wanted to burn in the ground the amount of people that had turned to stare. The look on his face! I simply cannot believe him.  I turn in my seat and stand up. I march out of the canteen with as much grace and dignity I can muster with a walking device and I could almost feel Jim being stunned speechless. A new feeling arouses from within me but I ignore it and continue to walk to my room with my nurse trotting behind me.


	2. Peter Pan

I stared at the red haired girl in disbelief. Were you allowed to just walk out? I’d walk out every day but I like the pudding. I pull my hand through my hair again as I wait. Patiently enough for me, I’m not a very patient person. Soon enough I see small bowls of jam roly poly. Mmm, they may be small portions but they taste fine. I start eating the Swiss roll, licking the jam off and getting cream in my nose. Ok, maybe it’s not quite jam roly poly – but that’s what I call it. My nurse begins to scold me and dap at my face with a cloth in a motherly way but I pull away. I don’t like Mothers. They ALWAYS end up leaving you, deserting you for a better place; or just plain dropping you out of your pram and not caring.

I finish my food and wait for the dinner room to get permission to leave. Thankfully we leave in stages so that people that pick at their food don’t make the rest of us stay around for hours. After we get permission I troop of to the boys toilets nearest my room. I begin to wipe myself up, feeling more resentful towards **_them_** with every swipe of the cloth. As I come back out my nurse is standing there, stamping her foot impatiently. Clearly she’s got issues of her own.  Maybe she’s got a friend she has to go met, or maybe I just…

 …Ran off again. Peter you need to stop doing that. You have us for a reason, so, please, do not disrespect us. We’re only trying to do our job to make your stay here better and…”

She continues to lecture me but I sort of just faze out by that point, dropping my face so I don’t have to look at how red she’s getting. That makes me laugh and lose… how many desserts was it last time?

She doesn’t half get mad at me and I don’t think she has finished lecturing me until I’m locked up for the night. My room is a bit of a mess, but I refuse help. The cleaner is a pretty girl but I’ve had enough experience with them and she ain’t coming nowhere near my stuff.  No matter how kind and pleasant she may be. That's always how they are; at the start. Tink; mischievous but so jealous, left me just to prove how I had made her feel; jealous and annoyed.  Tiger Lily, we had something but she, she wanted more from me than I could give her so I guess I lost my chieftain there. And Wendy, she’s the cause of everything. It’s all her fault.

If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have ended up here. If she hadn’t taunted me, beckoned me into a world that I never wanted to go then I wouldn’t have made all those mistakes. I hate girls! With their flouncy walks, stupid hair bows and sickly polite manners. What is wrong with them? They’re so pointless and stupid and I hate, hate, hate them all. Every single girl to walk this planet will be the perfect daughter that everyone coos over, even your nanny. Everyone prefers girls.

And they grow up to be mothers or nannies themselves. Stupid nannies that care more for pretty baby girls then their actual charge, leaving me in a position were I fall out of the cradle. If it wasn’t for fairies I would be dead. But then again, fairies are part of this problem too. Horrible, mean fairies; Pretending for years that you mean the world to them, constantly obsessing over you and themselves, only to leave you at the last minute. They only really care for being mischievous and evil, waiting for the right moment. As Slightly put it before they ruined him too; They fill up your head and make it big and boastful and then they kick you into the sea, letting your big head drown you in your annoyance and problems.

But he’s wrong and stupid! Wrong, wrong, WRONG! This was the idiot that thought I was going to be adopted. Like I need a mother. I hate Mothers, especially Wendy. And he’s wrong because I don’t think about my problems until they consume me. With that, I take all of my anger for girls into my right fist, imagine Wendy’s face on the wall, and punch it until my knuckles are bleeding red.

* * *

 

Knock, knock. Knock, knock. Knock, knock. A small, sweet little knock comes thumping lightly on the other side of the door. I don’t know how long I’ve been staring with my head on my wall but this is enough. I stand up properly and go over to the door.

“Hello Mister Pan, I’ve been told to tell you that your daily therapist session starts in 5 minutes. So let’s get you all straightened out.” The pretty maid is standing there. Her eyes look so sunken and empty. She doesn’t look like she came here by accident and for the slightest second I felt sorry for her. And then I remembered that I had vowed to hate all girls for eternity. She reaches out the most slender porcelain hand and wipes away tears. I shrug her away, too ashamed that I had ever shed a tear over stupid Wendy.

She cups me face in her hands and I stick my chin up so that my eyes look with hers. She was pretty little grey eyes, whilst mine are huge and brown. They’re weird eyes, and sometimes I hate them. She looks down and smiles into my face. I give her the smallest, thinnest smile back and then she kisses me.

I hate women, I want to repel all women but I would have kept that kiss going on for as long as possible. She tastes sweet, like buttered popcorn, and I want this memory to never fade. It’s not pressed or rushed, just sweet and gentle. I neither know nor care for her name or age, but this is calming; so calming. Tiger Lily’s kiss was spicy, like honey and this is the polar opposite. Wendy’s was stopped by Tink, so maybe Tink isn’t all bad.

She lifts her head up from mine and kisses my forehead. Then she takes my hand and leads me out of my room and along the corridors towards the therapist’s room. I don’t feel anything new towards her, I just realise that maybe I was right before; maybe she’s here for a reason. She seems to have as much sorrow in her heart as anyone and she works here. It can’t be a coincidence. As she leaves me at the waiting chairs, she squeezes my hand before walking off to sweep the floor or something.

The therapist’s door opens and this Asian girl with dark hair and prominent hips comes out. She looks bored, disinterested. She always does, every time she comes out of that room. As she has her weekly daily appointment before me I know she ran away from her marriage. So I guess that means she must hate all guys then. That makes us quits, so it wouldn’t hurt to smile at her.

I do and she waves a few fingers in my direction before heading off towards her room. Or at least I think it’s the direction of her room because she always goes that way after every meeting. Unless there’s someplace she goes at 11:34 every day.

My therapist is the same as always. Noisy, formal and practical. His name’s Zazu and is he annoying. 10 minutes a day with him and you wonder why most people here aren’t willing to commit suicide. He runs the same questions every day, sometimes changing some of them, or trying to talk to me about Neverland as though it’s a made-up place I went to escape some childhood abuse of something. Hello, there was no abuse, just abandonment. Has he even read my file?

“So how are you this morning? Any change on your standing about girls? Think really hard, do you really hate all women?”

What my brain says; Yes. What I actually say; No.


	3. Cinderella

I know I shouldn’t have done it. There’s even something in my job description about no interaction with the patients but I still shouldn’t have kissed him. It was all wrong, all so wrong. He was just a kid, 16 or something. I know he had grown up but I think part of him wished that he could stay a child forever and be The Boy That Never Grew Up. He couldn’t see it, just yet at least, but he was older than he thought he was. He was a gangly, skinny teenager so in his mind he would be able to get away with it. I felt so sorry for him. He was stuck here. But at least it was official.

Losing my husband might have driven me slightly insane, but how could he go away and fight a war he knew he’d never win? And he knew how far pregnant I was. Maybe the grief had killed the baby but now I have nothing left to reminding myself of him. His death caused the kingdom to be so depressed that they all left, leaving me wallowing in my pain by myself. The king had died of old age before he got to see the grandchild that never came.

Lady Tremaine was especially delighted at knowing that she’d be ladled with me again, but when she realised that I’d be so broken that I wouldn’t have the backbone to stand up to her and stop being a human teacloth, stretched and dried to within an inch of total ruin, she was the complete opposite.  Guess it was when I became so sloppy and slow that she realised that I was no use and had to be sent away. 

But this place! This place was a mystery. I didn’t know which side I was on. Was I free, an under contract slave? Or was I actually a patient and this was my special brand of therapy?  Work therapy to take all of stress out into cleaning all of the 145 windows. And polishing all the banisters until the glowed and sheened. And cleaning the floors so that the shined, but not so much that the patients would fall and hurt themselves. I was part of a machine and I was the little clog that helped a lot but no one thought about. It might as well be locked in a pen for all anyone cared.

I was as unstable, insecure, depressed and frightened of half this lot and yet I wasn’t part of their lot. My problems were more than some of theirs and yet I wasn’t penned up in little bedrooms like them. Maybe it was for the better, because allowing them to put up artefacts that make them cry probably wasn’t one of the best techniques to stop them being so depressed. So maybe the rule that cleaners weren’t allowed to have pictures in their room as we all have to share was a better rule.

But I didn’t share a room with them. I slept on the hearth in the kitchen, staring into the smouldering flame until I feel asleep.  How come the rule still applied to me when all of the criteria didn’t? Nothing about me makes sense here anyway. Maybe I’m better off not being here. Maybe I might as well just leave.

Except I remember someone trying to do that before. I can’t quite remember who it was, I just remember her hair was blonde and she didn’t have the best clothes. She only got so far before they caught her. Someone in my brain rung along with that but I couldn’t quite work out the missing link.

As I busy myself in my task again the matron comes storming past. Her head is too big for her body, and her boastful attitude hasn’t helped her problem.

“Cinderella! Penny has been sick in her room again and she needs it to be cleaned up immediately, the smell might make everyone else sick. And Jane has been bleeding all over her room. She’s been taken into intensive care for the next few days but her room will need to be completely sterilised for her return. I want your full attention or it will BE OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!” With that the Queen of Hearts turned and marched down the corridor. She always threatened to take my head off but everyone knew not to take her too seriously.

Finishing off the last tile in the hall I straighten up and go to the little cupboard where I keep my stuff. Even within the cleaning staff I was an outcast, someone not to be talked to or acknowledged; unless it was to laugh at me if my hair was completely frazzled after spending hours cleaning all of the ovens in the kitchens. I was always ladled with the hard and time consuming tasks, will the others were content to lightly dust the stairs.

As I grabbed my sick and blood cleaning equipment from the tiny cupboard I walked along the D block to the wards where Jane and Penny were. Luckily they were relatively close to each other so I didn’t have to trail half way around the place just to get to the other room. I go into Penny’s room first as its closest.

I feel sorry for Penny. There’s a connection between us in ways. We both had a chance of a better life but due to circumstances we blow it. She got adopted into a nice family and everything started looking up for her but there was the pain and horror of the past that haunted her in nightmares every night. As she’s a little one and is required to take naps, it is quite possible that she had another dream which made her upset and sick.

As I enter her room the smell of sick hits me. A clump of yellowing muck is splattered over the walls and the floor near her bed. Penny is sitting in the corner, as far away from the smell as possible but somehow it doesn’t seem to be bothering her that much. She is just staring into space, not caring that I’ve entered her rom. Something’s up. Penny doesn’t even like the strong smell of deodorants or food and yet the heavy stench emitting from the side of her bed wasn’t fazing her at all. She was sitting completely still, staring at the wall. There was nothing on her wall, just a white mass.

Her Teddy was being squeezed so tightly I thought he would pop. I had never seen her without her teddy since the day she had arrived here. Teddy was her constant companion, her constant friend. If you walked past her room you might here in deep in conversation with the matted bear.

I was scared. I knew how deep her love went for her teddy but this was scaring me. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing especially deeply. She might not even have been living for all of the good that she was doing to her health and to mine.

My breath was coming in short, raspy breaths. I didn’t know why but this was scaring me to the core.

“Penny, Penny! It’s me, it’s Cinderella. Penny!” Tears were rolling down my face at how unresponsive she was. “PENNY!!”

Then she turned round to me, death white with tears streaming down her face. “I’m scared.”

With those two words I rushed over and hugged her. I really was breaking the no-contact with patients rule today. As I consoled her I wiped the tears from her face and my own. It wouldn’t do us any good to cry.

After checking that she was stable for a few minutes I quickly cleaned up the sick. After sterilising the area I returned to Penny. I don’t know for how long I sat there holding her for. I know my job is to clean and not console but I know many of the patients would prefer me to some of the therapists they have. I wish I knew where I stood in this place though. I knew the information of everyone; everyone, that is, except myself.

**Author's Note:**

> This is incomplete but I will finish it if there is any requests for it


End file.
